Doomsayer confused as world doesn't end

The New York Post/May 22, 2011

By Heather Haddon and Douglas Montero

When the world did not end at precisely 6 p.m. yesterday, Doomsday prophet Robert Fitzpatrick's fragile grasp on reality crumbled.

"I don't understand why nothing is happening," said Fitzpatrick, flipping through his Bible for clues to why Rapture failed to show up on time.

"It's not a mistake. I did what I had to do. I did what the Bible said," he said, looking increasingly disheveled and confused as he stood in Times Square before mocking crowds.

A kooky Christian cult predicted that corpses would line the streets and deadly earthquakes would swallow up sinners beginning at 11:59 p.m. Jerusalem time on May 21, 2011.

Fitzpatrick, 60, a retired MTA engineer who became the city's self-appointed siren of the Apocalypse, spent $140,000 of his life savings on 3,219 bus, subway and commuter-rail ads trumpeting the coming "global earthquake" and urging sinners to repent to Jesus.

Fitzpatrick is a follower of Harold Camping, 89, an Oakland, Calif., evangelist who promised that on Judgment Day the righteous would be sucked up to heaven while sinners -- even children -- were to rot among fires, earthquakes and tsunamis engulfing the Earth. People would slowly die off until Oct. 21, 2011, when God completely KO'd the earth and all of its inhabitants.

Even cynical city dwellers got into the spirit of Doomsday, with New Yorkers hawking T-shirts, holding Judgment Day parties and Mayor Bloomberg deadpanning that he'd suspend alternate-side parking if the Earth crumbled.

Fitzpatrick's self-published tome on his predictions, "The Doomsday Code," earned $1,400 in royalties, he said. But his publicity stunt wasn't about getting checks. On Judgment Day, after all, money wouldn't matter.

Yesterday, the doomsayer ate a simple breakfast of toast and righteous "Ezekiel 4:9 Sprouted Grain Cereal" at home and boned up on the word of the Lord with his blue Bible. He tossed a few peanuts to squirrels in his back yard, though all the animals were supposed to die later that day in a "fireball."

"I expect this to be my last meal," he said solemnly after a light lunch of chicken tenders and spinach.

The gloomy Gus visited his sickly mother in a Staten Island nursing home one last time and prayed to reunite with her when they went knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door.

After 6 p.m. came and went, Fitzpatrick blamed himself for the wrong date with Doomsday, as "God is never wrong." He schlepped on the R train back to the Staten Island Ferry and pondered his next step.

"I didn't water my plants, I didn't do my dishes before I left. I didn't expect to go back home," Fitzpatrick conceded.

Additional reporting by Aaron Feis and Annais Morales

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